


A Very Aperture Christmas

by M3zzaTh3M3z



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Christmas Cards, Christmas Fluff, Gen, Painting, Testing - Freeform, wheatley discovers the true meaning of christmas or something idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9056614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/pseuds/M3zzaTh3M3z
Summary: GLaDOS says they can never celebrate Christmas while testing. Chell has other ideas.





	

A Very Aperture Christmas 

GLaDOS had lied to, misled and otherwise deceived Chell so many times that it hardly seemed worth listening to anything the megalomaniac said anymore. In much the same way that most things Wheatley considered a good idea could be filed safely under 'almost certain to get us killed,' most things GLaDOS said could be safely tuned out, except for the unlikely event that it really did relate to the never ending tests. 

Therefore, GLaDOS' hints that she had a surprise announcement in the next chamber went without response from Chell, except for a brief mental note to be cautious of any turrets that might be used to give said announcement. Even if she hadn't been mute it was a justifiable reaction.  
Wheatley had not yet reached that level of cynicism. "What do you reckon it could be?" he asked cheerfully. "Something nice maybe? Nah, I doubt it... Maybe some spikey crushers? Hope not!"  
Chell, as ever, said nothing and concentrated on finishing the chamber. It wasn't particularly difficult, she only had to place a couple of portals to manoeuvre a cube onto a button and ride a platform over some goo. Child's play really.  
Even Wheatley noticed the simplicity. "Hey, the last one way wayyyy harder than this! She must be losing her touch."  
Or she was planning nastier trials ahead, Chell didn't point out. Anyway, after narrowly avoiding death several times in the previous few chambers the easier test was welcome, whatever the reasons. 

With a pneumatic hiss the doors slid open. "Great job team!" Wheatley cheered, as though he had been of any help and not just remained strapped to her back in the makeshift harness she'd put together. Not that it was really his fault he'd been built without limbs, but it did add an extra challenge to carting him around the test chambers without a convenient maintenance rail. They hadn't seen one of those for a while come to think of it. GLaDOS at work again obviously.  
How long they'd been testing together she couldn't tell. Days tended to blend together down here. There wasn't a whole lot to mark the passing of time by, although the cramps growing in her stomach suggested it had been about 2 days since she'd last uncovered one of Rat Man's dens and some leftover supplies. GLaDOS did occasionally provide her with nutrient paste and water in between test chambers, but for all her 'genius' she didn't seem to have much idea about how often humans needed to eat. Turrets would be cuddly before Chell would beg her for anything. 

"I bet you've been wondering what I wanted to tell you," GLaDOS said as Chell and Wheatley entered the elevator.  
"Don't suppose it's that you're letting us go?" asked Wheatley without much hope.  
"You know, humans were wrong about many things. But I think they got one thing right. Robots really do do the funniest things." GLaDOS paused. "Oh wait, I misread that. The show was called 'humans dying of neurotoxins do the funniest things.' That makes much more sense."  
Chell rolled her eyes and wondered how much longer GLaDOS was going to drag it out.  
"Alright, what is it then?"  
"I'll tell you in 5, 4, 3..."  
"Ha! She's got those numbers wrong!" Wheatley whispered to Chell triumphantly. Despite herself, she broke into a smile and twisted her arm behind her back to give him a pat. Her range of responses was limited.  
"...2, 1..." continued GLaDOS. "I can now inform you that yesterday was the 25th of December, which you may also know as Christmas."

The elevator stopped and Chell stepped out. She ignored the first security camera on the shiny black wall but shot the second down without looking as she stood studying the helpfully provided test chamber description.  
"You didn't have to do that," GLaDOS said reproachfully. "I put a lot of hard work into making surveillance equipment for your own safety, yet this is how you repay me? At least Santa didn't need to give you any coal; you can just look where your heart should be."  
"What's she on about now?" asked Wheatley. Chell could feel his rivets digging into her back as he swivelled around, trying to get a better look at whatever fresh hell GLaDOS had prepared. Obligingly, Chell gave a turn so he could see all they had so far was a short white corridor and a sign promising turrets and light bridges.  
"Didn't you know? Humans used to believe that a fat man would come down the chimney on Christmas Eve and leave toys for all the good children and coal for all the bad. Of course it was always the parents. That's probably why Chell never received anything."  
"Weird... Did you know about this Christmas thing love? I mean, course I did. Read books on it I did. But... what other stuff did they do?"  
GLaDOS usually delighted in Wheatley's ignorance of pretty much everything and frequently refused to explain references she made in her insults, but this time she took more vindictive joy in explaining aspects of Christmas as she understood them, all with a vicious barb worked in there somehow of course. Aside from feeble attempts at rebutting the insults, Wheatley responded to every factoid with the same mixture of disbelief, derision and fascination. Why GLaDOS continued elaborating on topic Wheatley enjoyed didn't make sense to Chell, unless it was to upset him further when he realised he could never experience any of it himself. Whatever the reason, at least it kept him occupied and allowed her to focus on redirecting the light beams to hide from turrets and knocking down cameras as she zigzagged across the chamber.  
"Maybe I'll give myself some new cameras for Christmas. Next Christmas I mean. This one went by entirely without celebration. The next might as well of course. Depends wether I feel like telling you or not."  
"We'll celebrate it ourselves thank you very much!"  
"It would be amusing to watch you try but will you be able to keep track of 365 days? Or maybe 366? After all, how would you know if this is leap year?"  
"Aha! I know a trick for that! Thirty days has November... no wait, that's, that's not it... Aww, really thought I had it then... Sorry, not sure if you can have a Christmas after all..."  
Wheatley's rambling apology was cut short by a sudden wailing alarm.  
"I'm going to have to go get that. Try not to destroy everything while I'm gone."  
Chell paused for a minute, wary of tricks, before she peered around the next corner. When she saw the damaged panel sticking out from the wall she broke into a grin. Break felt like the right word, her muscles were unused to making that shape.  
To make things better, the single remaining turret was facing away and she was sure she could make out the sound of one of Rat Man's radios.  
After shooting off another camera for good measure, she placed on portal on the scrap of wall through the gap, another on the ground and jumped through into the den.  
"Argh!" yelled Wheatley at the sudden flip in gravity. However many times it happened it still seemed to catch him off guard. Odd for a robot that spent most of his time on the rail spinning. "Oh right, one of these places. Good find. Nice. We spending the night here then? Not that we get nights down here I suppose. I don't need them but humans might and hey, its a bit dark in here, shall I put the ol' flashlight on?"  
As he babbled, Chell untied him from the makeshift harness and propped him up on an old crate in the corner. The sudden glare of his flashlight momentarily blinded her, but when her eyes readjusted she found the walls were covered in Rat Man's murals.  
It was hard to be sure, but these ones seemed to show her and a companion cube doing something by a fire. Not really the combination she wanted in an image, not after what she was forced to do.  
"That guy really was a nut," Wheatley commented, playing the flashlight beam over the distorted images. "We were looking for him for years! Never found him of course, but it worked out alright in the end because that's how I ended up with you!"  
A funny way of thinking of it, but Chell still gave him a smile before returning to hunting through the rubbish left behind. The den revealed a cardboard bed, the radio, a few tins of beans, a can of orange fizzy (luxury!) and some half full paint pots.  
"I imagine you'll be going to sleep soon then. That's what I'd do, if I were a human what needed sleep and all that stuff. 'Oh look, a break from all this testing! I'd better get some rest!' is what I'd be thinking." Wheatley waved around the flashlight a bit more, trying to attract Chell's attention as she stated thoughtfully at the paint pots. "Not that I would tell you what to do or anything," he continued after a while. "But I can't help noticing that you're not going to sleep. Or eating. Or drinking. Which are all activities rated highly by most humans. Of course-"  
He broke off when Chell stood up and gave the paint pots a closer look. "What are you doing with those? Gonna paint the cameras? No, you can just portal them off... Um, alright, I give up love, what are you doing?"  
Picking up the pot of red paint, Chell gave him her best 'I have a plan' look. It did little to reassure him.  
"Oh no, you've got some sort of mad plan, don't you? Not that there's anything wrong with your plans!" he added hastily. "Just last time I nearly fell into a bottomless pit so..."  
Despite being fairly certain that incident had been the result of one of his plans, Chell smiled and gave him a pat. She was certain he would like this plan, if only because GLaDOS was certain to hate it. 

Determined to get it right, Chell took a bit of paint and time to experiment. She'd only get one shot at this after all, so she spent about an hour playing around with the one brush left behind and whatever paint she thought she could spare.  
At first Wheatley watched her paint little swirls and stars closely, but his short attention span meant that when her plan was not immediately clear he lost interest. As a robot he obviously didn't need to sleep, but without the management rail charging him he couldn't afford to be running constantly and so usually shut down when Chell had a rest. A big leap of faith, as he couldn't start himself up again. He had to trust Chell would wake him.  
It wasn't long until he started sounding sleepy, an affectation he put on when he was planning to turn off, possibly to try make her feel better about her lack of human contact. Or maybe it really was part of his programming - it wasn't like any of the Aperture robots made much sense.  
Once the familiar whir and glowing lights had disappeared, Chell decided it was time to move. She gathered up the paint pots and carefully posted them one by one through the portal into the test chamber, following closely behind. The turret was still facing away from her, guarding some button or other from an angle that would be troublesome come tomorrow when she would need to actually solve the test, but for now meant she could work in peace.  
Even so, she worked quickly, splattering the blank panels with scarlet, green, yellow - alien living colours in a white hell. Images emerged from her mad sweeping strokes, jumbled together as she struggled to hold onto the snatches of memory long enough to copy them out. When she was satisfied with the painting sprawled out across the floor and up the wall, she painstakingly wrote out a message in the space left. Each letter was shaky but readable which she thought was pretty impressive considering she couldn't remember the last time she'd written anything. She couldn't remember a lot of things.  
Out of paint and her head swimming from tiredness and the harsh lights, she portalled back into the den, pulled Wheatley down onto the makeshift bed, wrapped her arms around him and slept. 

Seemingly only seconds later, Chell was ripped from sleep by GLaDOS' voice. "I don't know why you're taking so long on this test. I thought it was quite simple. You had better not be slacking off in there. If you want a rest you know you only have to ask... And fill in all the appropriate paperwork of course."  
For the first time since making it briefly to the surface, Chell felt excited, even eager for what was next. Rather than wake Wheatley up immediately, she waited until she was stood in front of her masterpiece and held him out on the portal gun ray so it would be the first thing he saw.  
"Morning..." he said with a yawn that went on just a bit longer than a human's would. "What's all this? Did you make this?"  
Chell nodded and Wheatley's shutter went wide.  
"Really? When I was asleep? It's incredible but uh... what is it? Oh no, no, don't look upset, I'm probably just looking at it wrong!" He studied it carefully for a moment. Maybe her 'Merry Christmas Wheatley! Love Chell xxx' was more illegible than she'd thought. And suddenly he got it.  
"Wait, is that a Christmas tree? And that's that santa bloke... Is that what a reindeer looks like?!" He swivelled back to look at Chell with a look that on a human would be almost tearful. "It's Christmas, isn't it? Wow. That's... that's fantastic that is. Ha! And she thought we couldn't have a Christmas! Well look who just did! It's only us!" Spinning wildly, he laughed and Chell couldn't help silently joining him.  
"I don't know what you're finding so amusing in there, as someone destroyed my cameras" interrupted GLaDOS. "But I don't find poor test scores funny. I'd say it's okay if you're finding this tricky but it's really not. No wonder the orphanage kicked you out on Christmas."  
"Don't feel bad about that orphanage thing ," Wheatley said as Chell prepared to take out the final turret. "Not that it's true. No way did your parents abandon you. They probably just died which was nothing you could help. Um sorry," he added. "I don't know why I thought that would help." He went quiet for a moment, which gave Chell opportunity to pop behind the turret and gently knock it over.  
"Merry Christmas..." it murmured as it shut down - GLaDOS' idea of a joke maybe, but it gave Chell an idea.  
"Where are you going?" asked Wheatley, swivelling in his harness. "The exit is that way... oh, the paints again?"  
There was a certain grim satisfaction painting 'Merry Christmas GLaDOS - Chell' over the fallen turret. 

In the elevator to the next test, Wheatley piped up again. "Uh, so the point I was trying to make before..." he began slowly. Chell winced slightly as he squirmed and dug into her back. "About the orphanage thing. What I meant was even if the orphanage thing were true - which it's not! - but if it were, that would be alright because that led to you being here and making that Christmas card for me! Which I appreciate might not be the biggest comfort," he admitted after a second. "Uh, but it is kinda to me. So thanks. And Merry Christmas."  
A strange way of looking at it, Chell thought as she gave him another pat. But a strange way of looking at things was probably what was needed to survive down here, and they were both damn well going to survive.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic! I'd really appreciate any comments you might have :)
> 
> If you did enjoy it, I also have works in the Haikyuu, Ace Attorney, Widdershins and Supernatural fandoms you may like. 
> 
> You can find writing tips and read about my published romance novella "A Grey Valentine's" on my blog: https://conwaywrites.wordpress.com


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